Adrenaline

Whenever their pagers sound, every single one of the RNLI’s 5,600 sea-going crew members experience exactly the same thing: the rush of adrenaline.

In Plymouth, the crew race to the rescue of a fisherman who’s fallen off his boat and is now adrift in the water, with a sea temperature of just eight degrees. In Llandudno - Wales’s largest seaside resort - a father and son have capsized from their kayak on its very first outing.

In the ancient harbour town of Wick, in north east Scotland, a photographer is cut off by the tide on some remote rocks, with night drawing in. And just down the coast in Fraserburgh, the crew have to deploy their inflatable Y boat to rescue a fisherman whose boat has run aground on a rapidly shrinking reef.